When my Dad died, he had in his collection of railroad stuff a few dozen old envelopes. They are all stamped and canceled with dates from 1880 to 1951. Many have been torn open, but a few have been carefully opened with a letter opener, and I think I can probably convincingly glue them back shut. (I can't figure out how to make the torn ones usable.) I even have a few 100-year-old unused and uncanceled post cards, including a couple of 'railroad freight' format cards that were used to inform someone that they had a package waiting for them at the depot.

I'm going to use a few for 'prediction' effects, where an old typewritten or hand-written letter seems to predict a card choice or current event. But do you have any ideas for other things I could do with them?

(By the way, many are addressed to various railroad stations.)

Check out an effect I beleive is called Letter to the Devil in Trabell. If joking about being in cahoots with Satan isn't your cup of tea, I think you easily modify it to talk about other things and the envelopes would just make a nice touch.

In my article "Letter From Home" in The Wizards' Journal #3 (on my site), I recreate old envelopes (and stamps) from the Civil War era and age them to look authentic just to give someone in the audience the thrill of being contacted by an ancestor from the past who seems to know all about them (having run into an old Gypsy lady or something). Having authentic envelopes to work with is a plus, but you probably wouldn't want to do my ending where I give the envelope and letter to the person (after all, it IS addressed to them) along with the counterfeit Confederate Dollar it contains.

However, you might want to consider making full color photo copies of your envelopes so that you CAN make copies for magic use (burning, etc.) and aging them to look just like the real thing. It's easier when you have the real thing to compare it with sitting right next to the copy.

An idea for envelopes addressed to train stations... get an old map and locate the various stations to make a trail for following and to place the envelopes in order from here to there. If you can successfully make authentic looking copies of the envelopes, you can change addresses to fit the map more closely. The idea is to come up with a scenario where the contents from the letter in the first envelope leads to the contents of the letter in the next, ancd so on. Each new letter provides one more clue to the ultimate destination (and the hidden treasure- which might be in worthless confederate money or stocks that crashed out of existence in the 30's and so on).

The "package at the station" is a great concept, but to do it "authentically right" you would actually have to plant an aged package at some railroad station for the person to retrieve. I like the idea of "warned too late" in connection with this... you play a game of poker with the spectator and he loses every hand, and then later gets a package from an ancestor warning him not to play poker with you because he'll lose a lot of money. Inside the package are old fashioned cards (aged, of course) of the poker hand that lost him everything.

In my book "Spoof, It's Magic" OOP;
A coin is placed inside a signed envelope. One corner of the envelope is cut off. A marked coin allowed to slide through the corner on to the table. Envelope is sealed shut, then wadded into a ball. Coin is vanished. when envelope is straightened and smoothed out. It is fully restored and sealed. SPectator opens it to find his marked coin inside

You've got the perfect props to have a shortcut for the The Letter on page 207 in The Bigger Book of BOO! It's a real convincer.

Lary/TEB3

Find a copy of "Bundles" by Mark Edward..........Bizarre magick with a bundle of envelopes!..........

Second with Doctor REvil.
And all Mark Edward's stuff can be found at his web site:
http://www.themarkedward.com

Thanks for the ideas, guys. Looks like I'm going to have to buy yet MORE books.